Abstract
Single-phase nanocrystalline R2Fe17 (R = Pr and Nd) ribbons with rhombohedral Th2Zn17-type crystalline structure (space group R3̅m) have been fabricated by melt-spinning technique. The microstructure of the polycrystalline ribbons is composed of quasi-spherical grains with an average size below 100 nm. Transmission electron microscopy reveals that these grains are formed by agglomeration of smaller nanocrystalline entities around 15 nm in diameter, separated by disordered boundaries where the long-range crystalline order is lost. Two different ferro-to-paramagnetic phase transitions are observed, one of them coincides with that of the parent bulk alloy (290 and 326 K for R = Pr and Nd, respectively), and the other one can be ascribed to the disordered boundaries (323 and 350 K for R = Pr and Nd, respectively). For R= Pr, this fact gives rise to a significant broadening (c.a. 120 K under a magnetic field change of 2 T) of the full-width at the half-maximum of the magnetic entropy change curve, |∆SM(T)| (that adopts a "table-like" shape), resulting in a considerable increase of the refrigerant capacity.
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